Latest news with #TaxOffice
Local Germany
4 hours ago
- Business
- Local Germany
How to find an English speaking tax advisor in Germany
Thursday, July 31st is the deadline in Germany for people filing tax declarations for the 2024 calendar year without the help of a tax professional. Those filing with the help of a professional have until next April to submit their declarations to the Finanzamt , or Tax Office. Freelancers and self-employed individuals are required to file a tax declaration in Germany, whereas regularly employed individuals are not. But employees file their taxes anyway to get refunds. READ ALSO: The German tax deadlines to know in 2025 Navigating German bureaucracy can be a headache for anyone. That's especially true for foreign residents who have complicated finances or don't speak German. If that's the case for you, getting some outside help may be the way to go. If you think you'd benefit from some extra help as you prepare your taxes this year, here are some resources for English speakers filing taxes in Germany. You can find English-language tax professionals across Germany Tax professionals are legally liable for the advice they provide, so if they make a mistake, they pay for it. When seeking tax help, you'll want to look for an accredited Steuerberater , because they are specifically qualified to do tax returns. Alternatively a Buchhalter , or bookkeeper, is not specifically qualified to do tax returns, and is not legally liable for their mistakes. The U.S. Embassies in Germany each publish a list of English-speaking tax professionals that offer services in their respective regions. The embassy in Berlin's list of tax professionals includes providers that offer services in Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein and Thuringia. The embassy in Munich publishes a list of English-speaking tax advisors in Bavaria, and the embassy in Frankfurt publishes a list for Hesse, Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland. EXPLAINED: How US consulates help American citizens living in Germany The blog All About Berlin also has a list of English-speaking tax advisors in and around Berlin. Advertisement But even once you've found a firm that provides English-language tax help, actually hiring someone can still be challenging. Many firms are fully-booked and not taking on new clients – especially in big cities with many English-speaking professionals looking for tax help. A German tax declaration form with the box indicating income tax return ticked. Photo: picture alliance / Hans-Jürgen Wiedl/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa | Hans-Jürgen Wiedl For people living in Berlin, for example, it can help to look for a tax advisor in other parts of Germany. Your tax advisor does not have to work in the city where you live. Hiring a tax professional can also be quite expensive. Costs vary depending on whether you are employed or self-employed, but you can expect to pay at least a couple hundred euros for a single tax declaration. Note that accredited tax advisors can offer various services, like bookkeeping or legal advice at various prices, but prices to submit a tax return are tightly regulated. English-language tax software offers an alternative to tax professionals Because hiring a tax professional can be difficult and expensive, some people prefer to use online tax software. There are several options that offer English-language assistance. Some English-language options for preparing your taxes online include WunderTax , TaxFix and SteuerGo . WunderTax boasts that you can file your taxes online in just 17 minutes using its services. These services and others like them charge fees, but the fees are typically much lower than the cost of hiring a tax professional. The services mentioned above all advertise rates between €34 and €40 per tax return. Other services include SmartSteuer and MyExpatTaxes. Advertisement If your tax situation is simple enough that you'd like to try and manage filing on your own, you can create a profile with ELSTER, or the Elektronische Steuer Erklärung, to do so online . ELSTER is a free online platform run by the German government that allows users to securely file their taxes completely online. ELSTER is primarily a German-language platform, but many of its resources are also translated into English. READ ALSO: Germany's official online tax portal is now available in English
AU Financial Review
3 days ago
- Business
- AU Financial Review
ATO cuts tax penalty waiver approval rate from 90pc to 70pc
The Tax Office has revealed that it now approves about 70 per cent of taxpayer requests to have tax penalties waived, down from a COVID-era approval rate of more than 90 per cent. A spokesperson for the ATO said the agency had this year launched a review into its process for granting full or partial penalty waivers 'to ensure consistency in decision-making'. Taxation Ombudsman Ruth Owen is also reviewing the process and will report back by January 2026.
ABC News
4 days ago
- Business
- ABC News
ATO leaving tax money on the table
Rachel Mealey: The Tax Office is one of the biggest government agencies in the country and among the most secretive. But a Four Corners investigation has found the agency set up to protect our revenue is failing us badly, with more than $50 billion in taxes uncollected. Angus Grigg reports. Angus Grigg: There's one number the ATO does not like to talk about. It's called collectible debt. Karen Payne: Around the time we were looking it was about $34 billion. Angus Grigg: Karen Payne is a former Inspector General of Taxation. The figure she mentioned has now grown to almost $53 billion. That's undisputed money owed to the ATO, which it has failed to collect. Karen Payne: It's a big number and if you bring that number back into the revenue then that means hopefully less taxes that everybody else has to pay. It's in all of our interests that the debts get collected. Angus Grigg: More worrying for Karen Payne is that this number has more than doubled over six years. Karen Payne: The fact that it keeps rising is troubling. Angus Grigg: The ATO collects hundreds of billions of dollars of our taxes every year, but despite its scale is subject to little oversight. This is a long held frustration for Senator Barbara Pocock. Barbara Pocock: There's a lot that happens behind the closed door of the ATO that isn't open to scrutiny for us as average citizens and taxpayers. Angus Grigg: The ATO tells us it's doing a stellar job, even as the scandals mount and evolve. Two years ago the ATO reported $2 billion was stolen in a GST scam that became known as the TikTok fraud. News report: The ATO is blaming influencers on TikTok for promoting the scam. Angus Grigg: New details uncovered by Four Corners show the ATO was warned its fraud detection systems were badly lacking. Ali Noroozi is a former Inspector General of Taxation. Ali Noroozi: There have certainly been on notice that their risk assessment tools could do better. Angus Grigg: Not only did the ATO fail to heed this warning, just two months before the GST scam blew up in mid-2021, it downgraded the fraud risk from severe to low. Ali Noroozi: So given any kind of fraud really, you need to take it seriously. You need to act on those early warning signs. Angus Grigg: Of the $2 billion stolen in the TikTok scam, just 8%, or $160 million, has been recovered. And of the 57,000 people who took advantage of it, just 122 have been convicted. The ATO says GST fraud is not widespread and the majority of businesses are doing the right thing. Karen Payne says we should all care about tax administration because it funds essential services. Karen Payne: That allows the government to fund the services that we all benefit from. So health, defence, security, infrastructure. So it's a pretty key part of our democracy. Rachel Mealey: The former Inspector General of Taxation, Karen Payne, ending Angus Grigg's report. And you can catch Four Corners tonight at 8.30 on ABC1.
Local Spain
21-07-2025
- Business
- Local Spain
Can a joint bank account help you avoid paying gift tax in Spain?
The most typical family members that give financial gifts is of course parents giving money to their adult children. This could be elderly parents helping their kids out with savings or special purchases. One of the ways that some people choose to do to get around this open a joint bank account with one or more of your children so that you can share your money with them. Previously this could have been interpreted as parents sneakily trying to gift their kids money, without it being reported as a gift and paying tax on it. It could be seen as the children automatically owning 50 percent of whatever you deposited. The Treasury has now clarified, however, that including a child as a joint owner of a bank account does not necessarily imply an automatic gift donation and there is a difference between holding a bank account and owning money. The new resolution from the General Directorate of Taxes which came out in April 2025 is based on various Supreme Court rulings which establish that the fact that a person is a co-holder of a bank account does not mean that the money they have access to is theirs. It means they simply have permission to access and can undertake operations. "Joint ownership simply implies the availability of funds by either owner, without determining the existence of joint ownership, much less equal shares, of said balance," the resolution states. This means the Tax Office does not automatically assume that 50 percent of the deposited funds belong to the joint owners. Instead, each joint owner only owns the percentage of money they have contributed. The Tax Office recognises joint ownership as an "agreement with the financial institution" that does not affect the ownership of the money, and allows for the free use of the funds in that account within the limits of that financial agreement. This means that, as far as the bank is concerned, both holders can use the funds without considering the percentage contributed by each party. Be aware though, if it is a true gift, you should still declare it as so and it's likely you will still have to pay gift tax on it. Keep in mind, this only applies while both parties are still alive. If for example, an elderly parent has a joint back account with their adult son or daughter and then dies, Article 1.138 of the Civil Code apply, states that the portion corresponding to the deceased then becomes property of their heirs. This means that the surviving holder cannot prove a higher percentage of ownership, 50 percent of the deposit would become part of the inheritance and its ownership would pass to the heirs. In this case then they would have to pay inheritance tax on it.
Sydney Morning Herald
09-07-2025
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
Do you really need an accountant to do your tax return?
Real Money, a free weekly newsletter giving expert tips on how to save, invest and make the most of your money, is sent every Sunday. You're reading an excerpt − sign up to get the whole newsletter in your inbox. If no one has done so yet, let me be the first to wish you a happy end of financial year, a day I'm sure you've been counting down to on your calendar, staring wistfully out the window as you awaited its arrival. Well, wistfully stare no more, as we are officially in the 2026 fiscal year, and as the saying goes, it's tax return time baby! If you don't think about all the tax you've paid for the past 12 months, getting your tax return is basically like free money (unless you end up owing tax, in which case, I have no silver lining for you). Plus, with the awful weather in Sydney and Melbourne at present, what better time to curl up on the couch and start tallying up your deductions? You could even invite a friend! What's the problem? I am embarrassingly eager to do my return (if that's not obvious), but not everyone is so crazy about the idea. Data from the ATO shows about two thirds of Australians pay a tax agent to handle their affairs, while the remaining third of us do it ourselves. If that sounds like a lot, that's because it is − Australia has one of the highest rates of tax agent use in the OECD. Loading The Tax Office doesn't break down that data by age, but I'd bet that most people employing tax agents would be on the older side, while younger workers are more likely to do it themselves. There are a few reasons for this, one of the biggest being that the online tax lodgment service, MyTax, has only been around for a decade or so, and its e-Tax predecessor was by all accounts a complete nightmare.
